John McCarthy (computer scientist)

"John McCarthy's Home Page at stanford.edu"

"It's difficult to be rigorous about whether a machine really 'knows', 'thinks', etc., because we're hard put to define these things. We understand human mental processes only slightly better than a fi…"

"Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs, and having beliefs seems to be a characteristic of most machines capable of problem solving performance. However, the machines mankind ha…"

"LISP is now the second oldest programming language in present widespread use ... Its core occupies some kind of local optimum in the space of programming languages given that static friction discourag…"

"Quotes at John McCarthy's new website maintained by Project JMC."

"Program designers have a tendency to think of the users as idiots who need to be controlled. They should rather think of their program as a servant, whose master, the user, should be able to control i…"

"Whenever we write an axiom, a critic can say that the axiom is true only in a certain context. With a little ingenuity the critic can usually devise a more general context in which the precise form of…"

"is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization i…"